The real test: Latham faces his party

Mark Latham is the youngest Labor leader in a century to address the party's national conference.
Picture: Andy Zakeli

Asylum seekers and trade are shaping up as the tough issues at Labor's national conference, reports Annabel Crabb.

When Mark Latham next week becomes the youngest Labor leader in 100 years to address the party's national conference, he will do so alone. His wife and two baby boys will not be tagging along but the implied message of their existence - that Latham represents a new generation - will be heavily in the air.

The 42-year-old, who has spent the past few days polishing his speech and meeting frontbench colleagues to finalise the announcements he will make at the conference, will face his first big test in Sydney.

Thanks to the structural reforms gouged out by his predecessor, Simon Crean, Latham will face a party conference of roughly 400 people, twice as large as the gatherings that since 1986 have crammed into Hobart's Wrest Point Casino.

This year, the conference will be in Sydney and its increased size means one thing for a young and untried leader: unpredictability.

As usual in the lead-up to these events, negotiations are proceeding behind closed doors to seek out compromises to the thorniest issues expected to present themselves during the three-day program: asylum seekers, first, followed by the traditional bingle over trade and whether it should be "free" or just "fair".

Labor for Refugees, an energetic group that hounded former leaders Kim Beazley and Crean in turn over the party's 2001 stance on immigration, has lodged a comprehensive set of amendments demanding sweeping policy change.

Backed by Carmen Lawrence, who will be chairing the conference as the party's first female president, the group will be arguing for the abolition of the Christmas Island detention centre, the abolition of mandatory detention and the abolition of the temporary protection visa system, which the Howard Government introduced in 1999.

Latham took a step towards dealing with this impasse late last year when he appointed one of his detractors, Stephen Smith, to the immigration portfolio.

What's important is that Latham is seen to have the argument, and is seen to win it.- SENIOR LABOR MEMBER

Smith, a Western Australian, is close to Lawrence and has been working with her in recent weeks; in one appointment, Latham brought Lawrence into the tent and at the same time managed to force an erstwhile enemy to take a stake in Latham's salvation.

One senior Labor figure says the aim of the game is not to stitch up a deal on asylum seeker policy before the conference - quite the opposite.

"What's important is that Latham is seen to have the argument, and is seen to win it," he says. "Two Labor leaders have been held to ransom over this issue already and Mark Latham can't afford to let himself become the third."

Lawrence is gently dismissive of the idea that any deal would be possible anyway - she is wedded to abolishing temporary protection visas.

"I think the main thing is that we will have a full debate, a public debate. These are important because they lay out the evidence and the arguments before the whole community," Lawrence says.

"Whether that results in any change to the platform or to the parliamentary position remains to be seen."

Of course, not all complications at Labor conferences emanate from within the party.

At the last Labor conference in Hobart in 2000, John Howard chose the conference day to announce that he would be empowering the states to deny in vitro fertilisation treatment to single women and lesbians, creating a nasty tangle for then Labor leader Beazley.

This time, the Prime Minister may to do it again by announcing a successful free-trade agreement with the United States just as Latham mounts the conference podium.

Trade Minister Mark Vaile will be in Washington all week presiding over the final stages of the negotiations and Government optimists are talking up the possibility of a Thursday or Friday result. In this event, Latham would be obliged to offer a commentary on the Australian Government's decision to bind itself in a trading relationship with the country run by a man Latham once described as "dangerous and incompetent".

He has handled this quite well during his first six weeks in the job, but having to be tactful about US President George Bush in front of 400 people who probably agreed with his original analysis would be a ticklish diplomatic task. Instead, the new Labor leader will attempt to capitalise on a palpable feeling of slightly surprised optimism that is currently dominant among caucus members.

At the conference, Latham will produce a closely guarded announcement on early childhood education, an issue that he regards as his personal weapon against Howard.

Not only does attention to this area pique the interest of young parents in crucial outer metropolitan seats, reasons the Leader of the Opposition privately, but talking about it also gives him the opportunity to repeatedly use the phrase, "As a father of young children" - a subtle reference to the Prime Minister's advancing years.

Veteran conference-goers are predicting an outbreak of support and peace next week; even the seasoned rabble-rousers seem more interested in what Latham will do than in creating a stink themselves.

"The bloke could win," reasons one. "And nobody wants to be on the wrong side of that."